More Than An Angel
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: By making her his angel, he had cheated her of herself. I'm not the one who needed saving, Anakin...you can kill as many innocents and as many stormtroopers as you want, Anakin, but it won't fix the mess you've made. AU, 5 years postROTS. Anakin sees Padm
1. Again

**A/N: This has been tugging at my mind for ages and I had to get it out. I'm not sure where it's going, if anywhere. It's obviously AU, about five years after ROTS, and I decided this is how it works- Obi-Wan didn't go with to Mustafar, so Anakin didn't choke Padmé and she left and had the babies on Coruscant. **

**Disclaimer: _Ce n'est pas a moi. C'est a George Lucas. _**

It had been years since he last saw her, since he watched her get into her ship and fly away from him, forever. Since he realized he could not use the Force to hold her there, because she had just as much of a paralyzing effect on him as it should have had on her. And now, now that he saw her in the processing chamber of this maximum security detaining station, she was _different_.

Her hair was the first thing he noticed. It always was, since as a nine-year-old he had been somewhat fascinated by the elaborate confection of braids merging gracefully into one on her head (little did he know that for her, that was simple!). But now, it was shorter, straighter. It looked lighter- it had been bleached by radiation, like his. She was a pilot now, in the Rebellion. He wasn't surprised. He had always thought she would be good at it. But when he saw her hair, how she had changed it, his first thought was one of anger. _How could you change your hair! _

He didn't realize that this close, their old Force connection lingered. That hate often has love at its center.

_It's _my _hair, _Vader_. I'll do whatever the hell I want to it_. He nearly winced at the force of her anger. Her thoughts were not calm and collected as they had been before. She was more intense now, angrier. More like him.

Padmé Amidala was afraid. She was afraid for her children, that he would find out where they were. She was afraid he wouldn't even have to torture her to find out. She was afraid of what just being in the same room as him did to her.

She was afraid that she was still in love with him.

She studied him in her peripheral vision, without letting him know she was looking, without changing the defiant set of her chin. His hair was shorter, ironically more neat than it had been when he was a Jedi. _I thought you turned to the Dark Side to let loose all that raging chaotic passion_, she thought somewhat bitterly, forgetting that he would pick it up.

_How dare you say that! _His cry echoed with anger and…even pain. _I did it for you, to save you_.

_I'm not the one that needed saving, Anakin. _

She hadn't meant to think that, or to call him by the name of her husband. Her husband was _dead_. This was someone else entirely, someone she did not love, but hated. She didn't realize that hate often has love at its center.

She was looking at him full-out now, and he at her. His eyes were burning with something. _Passion. Rage. Both unfulfilled. You can kill as many innocents or as many stormtroopers as you want to, Anakin, but it won't fix the mess you've made. _

_You're not angry with me. You're not even angry with the Emperor, though you wish him dead. You're angry with yourself. _

The force of the answer nearly sent her reeling back into the wall, though she didn't show it on her face.

_I AM NOT!_

She realized then that not a single word had been spoken out loud since he had arrived. How strange. How utterly and completely surreal this whole thing truly was.

Anakin realized something, looking at her, hearing her thoughts. That chaotic intensity, her stance- overtly confident, even cocky, so very unlike her usual dignified elegance- the way her face was set, everything, even down to the look in her eyes and the air of mingled anger and confidence emanating from her, was an imitation of _him_. It was his old self, his Jedi self, staring out from the eyes of the person he loved most in the galaxy.

_This is what you gave up. This is what you left behind_.

Looking at her now, he realized that by making her his angel, he had cheated her of herself. Standing here before him now, she was more than an angel. She was fiery, she was sad, she was grieving, she was defiant, she was _pissed_. She was a woman, a person, full of emotions and ideals warring with each other. She was more than an angel.

And she was still in love with him.


	2. Introspection: An Interlude

**A/N: This is kind of a mental interlude, giving the characters' thoughts some clarity and some airing out. Remember- I don't mean this to encompass everything that they're thinking at the moment- people can think of a surprising amount of things at the same time- but one area. Padmé's is more focused on memory, and Anakin's on analyzing himself. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

_Interlude_

_Padmé: _

During the Clone War, I had an awful secret.

Sometimes, after Anakin had come home to me from months of being away, and we had done nothing but make love for hours and hours until we could not move and we were sweetly sore to the depths of our bones, I would be glad, just in the space of a single thought, a nanosecond, that we were apart from each other for so long.

I knew that marriages born of reckless passion often do not last. Oh, not that I thought Anakin would leave me, or that we would fall out of love, never, (and never, never, never did I imagine _this_) but I knew we would grow comfortable, perhaps even dulled, in our love. It was good for us to have passion for awhile longer than some. Also, I knew other young married couples fought, but we never did. Our time together was so precious that even with the natural tendency the two of us, with our respective personalities and politics, would have had to argue, we repressed it and filled our time to the very last second with love as passionate as the arguments we didn't have.

Until the last time my Ani came home to me.

_Anakin_:

During the Clone War, I had an awful secret.

I _liked _it. I liked fighting….killing. Oh, I hated the deaths of comrades and friends, and I hated being away from Padmé, but I could lose myself in the…joy of fighting, and, in the darkest depths of my soul, of killing. I found solace in the thrill of godlike power causing death sent through me. Killing was my substitution for Padmé's love. Simply put- away from her, I was off my meds.

But that wasn't it. Her absence was a good excuse to make to myself, but the truth was I would have enjoyed killing even if she were a mile away and I went home to her every day. As long as, of course, she didn't know about it. Killing made me high like the things sold in the underbelly of Coruscant. It made me remember, after it was over, my words about someday being all-powerful. It made me _feel _all-powerful.

But I wasn't, and I'm not. Now I kill thoughtlessly, daily at the very, very least, directly and indirectly, and, like everything else, it brings me no feeling at all. No pleasure, no power, no sadness, no anger. Yes, it's true; Darth Vader isn't even angry anymore.

I'm acting.

The irony is, I think Obi-Wan- no, he was at least human until he coldly betrayed me- the rest of the Jedi Council, then- would consider what I am now- emotionless, cold- to be the perfect Jedi.

Instead, I am the perfect Sith.

But that's a lie; I'm not even that. I _should _be angry, I _should _feel more than ever before. But. I. Don't.

Until the first time my Padmé came back to me.


End file.
